Originally from Washington, D.C., I am a public relations specialist based in Philadelphia and have had writing featured by NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Fox News, and Philly.com. I have published two novels, which can be found on Amazon. I graduated in 2009 from Dartmouth College with a degree in Russian. Follow me on Twitter @whatsthefracas. E-mail me at readmaura@gmail.com

A Liberal Arts Degree Doesn't Correlate With An Easier Life

My peers, that is, liberal arts educated, urban aesthetes, have been preoccupied since graduation with their path in this world. It’s not a novel notion for a human being to be concerned with where he’s going, since there are no longer any natural rhythms or movements for our species, no migration patterns, no perennial hunting grounds. We can fly around the world in a leather recliner: the sky’s the limit for us. Yet, this freedom of opportunity in a way is self-inhibiting. The vast array of options is arresting. Only the single-minded can wade through those options on the first try.

A lot of my peers, while in angst over their path, have found themselves in situations born of the necessity of paying bills and loans. Ask them if these first jobs are fulfilling. The answer would be bleak. Ask them then if they believe they can move on from that job to something better suited to them. The response would be better. Quite a few, though, would tell you that their current occupation is getting them nowhere because it is wholly unrelated to what they plan to do or even what they find interesting in life. Those who studied in college what they found interesting thus see themselves with inapplicable degrees.

There is certainly value to how we educate ourselves, which poems we explicate, hearts we dissect, websites we build. The absurdity of a liberal arts degree, however, arises with the expectation that it entitles the bearer to an easier life. Odd that so many of us got the impression that having written fifty pages on Themes of Love and Beauty in Cave Paintings or The Impact of Geography on the Concept of Erosion would somehow set us up for a higher quality of life than the average American. These schools supposedly have career services offices. Instead of hiring a new Dean of Plurality or Sustainability Coordinator, colleges could use some of their endowment to lure students into visiting those offices before senior year.

The idea of thinking about life outside of the campus bubble, though, is anathema to many undergraduates. Better to borrow some Ritalin and focus on what really matters: these four special years of self-invented activities and impractical core curricula, where there are few adults and no children. No one would ever dispute that it’s a fun time. The argument lies in whether or not it’s worthwhile.

“College for everyone” is the refrain of many policymakers. Perhaps a sound idea, but anecdotal evidence, at least from this cohort, shows that college doesn’t serve anyone well unless they think how they’re going to apply it to their lives after they turn twenty-two. That may be unfair to the many graduates who do think about their futures or who honestly believe that their obscure degree will lead to a job when every other person with that obscure degree will be vying for those same jobs. Many of us were indeed planning, we might have just gotten a little carried away with the idea that adult life could be as intellectually stimulating and sensually pleasing as our post-adolescent existence. Most people fall victim to runaway imaginations, but when you have a whole group of people with highly developed imaginations, the delusions can be startling.

Of course, most of my peers by this point have accepted the unpleasant reality of living in an economy crawling out of a recession, in a society that cannot agree on values, in a country that is no longer exceptional, in a world that is on the brink of mutual destruction while preparing for the Summer Olympics. We get it now. Acknowledgment of our reality, however, does not put us any closer to finding our paths.

We aren’t any closer because there may still be one piece of the adult puzzle that we are not identifying. Passions are not paths. Many of my friends found their passions in college. That’s why they treasure the experience. Of course, everyone wants to make a living out of what they love. No one wants to be disgruntled, but maybe we are setting ourselves up for just that by desiring to pursue interests that aren’t jobs. We spent so much money and time cultivating those interests. They would seem to be going to waste in a cubicle, but aren’t they going to waste in a coffee shop too?

Finding a path is not a linear activity, as much as we conceive of it as being a straight line. The first step after college might set us on a trajectory nowhere near the one we want to be on. Where we go from there is significant. It not only determines where we are headed as individuals, but it signals the direction of society. We can find a spiritually fulfilling path or a practical one, rarely both at once. The choice now is which one will we step towards next.

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Two points that all college students should consider: 1) There is no one thing that will make you happy. There are interesting challenges all around, many you’ve never heard of, many that you would be happy working on. Some of them are in business and pay very well. 2) The ability to push numbers and other forms of information around is very valuable to businesses. You can get a job out of college with a philosophy major–if you have a computer science minor.

However, you cannot go on your own path and be assured that anyone will pay you for doing that.

Bill, Sound advice indeed. I would say this applies to anyone, not just college students. Or is this something you acknowledge but were directing at college readers? Maybe I’m not contextualizing your comment accurately….The main point I took from your comment was (while there may be multiple avenues by which people achieve happiness) that happiness is achieveable. Thus happiness is an achievement. Something that requires values, goal setting and pursuit. The barometer of happiness being whether or not the premise of happiness was rational. Happiness, success, and other good things in life (nay, great things in life) don’t require a college degree, etc. Maura gets it right when she says passions (whims, wishes, etc) are not actuals. Just as, you said Bill, “you cannot go on your own path and be assured that anyone will pay you for doing that.” I think a lot of people are passionate about ‘something’ and because of that they think (if you can call it that) that they’re entitled to wages. Passion isn’t production, just like wishing to be happy won’t achieve happiness.

I think you can separate the motivation to pursue a college degree into two categories: those seeking personal fulfillment and those focused on acquiring skills to increase their economic value. Both are noble goals but young people should be sure the route they pick is consciously chosen with full consideration of the benefits and detriments each has to offer. I personally was drawn to physics but because I was so focused on attaining skills of value in the economy, I majored in electrical engineering and settled for minors in physics and math. Most liberal arts majors simply do not provide skills of economic value, the best one can hope for is an emphasis on critical, creative thinking so the student emerges a little better in problem solving skills. Lastly, there are some liberal art majors that simply should not exist, providing no real value, personal or economic.

I think you should begin to define your argument, set parameters for your accusations and allegations, something that both the sciences and the arts demand in rational thought (and no, the arts are not clueless about rational argument). As it stands, this piece would hardly pass muster in most debate situations ( I am assuming that since this was published and is open to comments, you are inviting a conversation).

First, you are surely speaking of the travesty of liberal arts in the United States. Having met and studied in other foreign countries that prize non-scientific learning, and having taught American undergraduates for more than 5 years, I am convinced this must be the case. Other countries prize the utility and honor of certain professions, and they are openly mercenary about it, but only in America is the independence and authority of individually-chosen ignorance so highly prized.

Your peers are your control group for your deductions. Clearly they do not represent the diversity, talent or real intelligence and maturity of thousands of students across this country, nor do they represent those who are good at the arts and choose to pursue it to a successful doctorate and beyond. Those who choose the liberal arts do not choose an easier life. They do not expect to be sheltered or rewarded without pain. Some choose to seriously answer the question—how do we live now? Seriously, is that not a honorable pursuit, since in a way you too have tried to answer those words in your own lexicon?

I feel you are chastising those who display the social and behavioral characteristics of tech boy-geniuses without possessing their technological abilities.

You are blaming your peers for their choice of degrees when clearly the curricula are the things that are useless and unrealistic, not the people. These are not “worthwhile” now because American system will not even permit a person willing to earn a low wage the ability to feed, clothe and shelter himself minimally, on his own, and with some self-respect.

You must forgive me for saying so, but my perspective as a foreigner makes me bemused when I look at America. Why do you all not simply advocate to your youth that certain degrees as being more economically useful than others instead of making the choice of career a value-laden harangue on utility to society? Why do you care if some people knowingly make certain choices? Isn’t this country supposed to be about freedom? And why should those who seek a life of poverty while pursuing philosophy, literature or history or geography, be made to feel bad about their contribution to knowledge as long as they can earn a living and pay taxes? Why make it deviously impossible for them to earn a living, i.e. rig the system, and when they make choices, blame and punish them for making a bad one? If you do not want more majors in those fields, track students differently from high school, offer different classes, remove the stigma from vocational training, reduce the number of seats for unwanted fields, lay off teachers, and convert departments and colleges. But because you do not want overt intervention, or ‘big government,’ you will not do that. Instead the controls on the system are placed by stealthy means, a system of striving and reward in which the game is tilted towards utilitarian outcomes.

Why does America obsess over the inutility of history, philosophy or literature? Every civilization, every culture has a place for these. Only in America, with its short history of 300 years, do I find the presumption that these are not necessary. It is as if the country is obsessed with what it does not know, cannot control, and cannot predict. It has elevated science and technology to the Apollonian and now it fears what it have relegated to the Dionysian.

“Some choose to seriously answer the question—how do we live now? Seriously, is that not a honorable pursuit, since in a way you too have tried to answer those words in your own lexicon?”

All well and good and indeed an honorable pursuit. In one’s own time. Answering existential questions is not a profession. Unraveling the mysteries of life is not an occupation. There is no harm in having an interest in the liberal arts. There is, however, harm in assuming that a person can survive on nothing but that interest.

You took the words right out of my brain. I do think the fundamental difference in our generations is that my generation went to college in order to obtain skills, skills that would allow us to make a good living. We may have found ourselves while we were there, but our goal was a path to making a good living, not fulfillment.

Thanks! I’m glad it struck a chord, especially with someone outside of my cohort. One of the confusing things about higher education now is that there are indeed opportunities to find a path to a good living, but there are a lot of distractions, be it the unsustainable social experience or the buffet of superfluous courses. I tested out of math, having taken calculus in high school, but I still had to satisfy a distributive requirement in that field. I took a cross-listed Comparative Lit class on the concept of time. Interesting to be sure, but was it necessary to my pursuit of a salary and health insurance? Hardly. I envy your generation’s opportunity to obtain skills, real skills.

I believe the opportunity to obtain “real skills” is there. I also believe that the “superfluous courses” have their place. For example, I absolutely LOVED my logic course, but I didn’t major in it. The difference, in my opinion, is that people have started to major in the course work they LOVE. Generally speaking, this often isn’t practical. The fact is you get to do what you love after you have what you need. We need to counsel our students along those lines…major in math, minor in philosophy.

“Answering existential questions is not a profession. Unraveling the mysteries of life is not an occupation.”

You seem to be of the opinion that the only value of a post-secondary education is vocational. Considering that today’s generation of workers are expected to change careers a number of times in his or her life, would a widely-applicable arts degree not be a logical choice to pursue as opposed to a narrow vocational degree? Don’t be deluded into thinking that an education is a skill.

Unfairly, my first impression, given the headline, was that this essay was going to be child-of-privilege, Ivy League, for goodness sakes, whining. Unfair, first, because it’s obvious you and your recent-grad peers walked into the chainsaw of a ghastly economic downturn and second, because the piece didn’t really strike me as whining. It was probably easier for us oldsters, since the number of grads was fewer back in the day. But, nearly 40 years out from an “impractical” lib arts major, with a spouse with arguably an even more “impractical” degree, but also with a son and daughter-in-law, mid-2000s grads, who managed (as we’ve joked) to choose even more impractical degrees, I had to shake my head, and smile. First at the notion that it’s “absurd” to think a lib arts degree leads to as “easier life.” I guess it’s like that old set-up and punchline, Henny Youngman, maybe: “How’s your wife?” “Compared to who?” It’s self evident that there are lots of ways, even without traveling to the developing world, to find many people whose lives are miserably harder than the average American lib arts degree major. Even just here in the wallowing-in-affluence U.S., recession and real pain for many notwithstanding, your cohort’s unemployment rate is vastly lower than either the average or any category of less-educated group. Yes, that doesn’t make it less painful to have dreams of something more fulfilling, stimulating, fulfilling, and beyond the damnable cubicle. But if it wasn’t evident, someone should have pointed out that you aren’t likely to waltz out of college into a job in Russian literature, any more than I was with a BA in comp lit and creative writing, or my wife with a degree in theatre, our DIL with a major in Latin and Classics, and son with, egad, comp religion. If the point is to find the “easy-ness” or a virtual sure thing, quite-lucrative job right out of college, while also following your passion, lets hope your passion is suitable to a more vocational degree: accounting, engineering, math education, nursing, speech therapy. Otherwise, live simply, tough out the cubicle a little while, devise a plan, save up some money, and yes you can, then get out of the cubicle, jump off the metaphorical bridge, take a risk, start a business, or go to grad school if, as is often the case, a BA in your passion isn’t enough to actually pursue it. Learn to compete if you’re in a competitive field. Your degree might just serve you extremely well, as all the four impractical majors mentioned above have, indeed. (The comp-religion son got a job in IT because the firm needed someone who could work directly with college professors across a very wide range of disciplines. Now he’s in grad school getting a combined Mdiv and social work masters, he and the Latin-teacher wife, who joins him in the same duel degree program next fall, both content in what appears not to be a delusion: making, or having, a lot of money — cover your ears Steve Forbes, maybe with those silver spoons — isn’t important. Helping hurting people can be a form of bliss.) Masnaghetti follows up with many thoughtful comments, yet he does at the end seem to be suffering from a common misconception, and helps to perpetuate an annoying myth repeated way too often recently in the often-bewildered business press, that “most liberal arts majors do not provide skills of economic value” even though in the next beat he gives a nod to “critical, creative thinking.” Really? The nicest word I can think of is “poppycock.” Uh, first, the thinking, the analysis, the communicating (notice the quality of the writing in our young author’s blog) that’s the whole point of a good liberal arts education. Done properly, the “major” is only part of a diverse education in the liberal arts, nothing more or less than a chance to focus a chunk of one’s attention more deeply on one field of interest. So, even for the “impractical” majors in science, math, the social sciences. And I wonder which useless majors the commenter has in mind? My wife switched from working in the performing arts to college teaching in mid-career at yes, at a liberal arts school, and I also later minimally joined up as adjunct faculty. Yes, we’ve watched the many graduates that stay in touch struggle sometimes, especially recently. Yet some have gone on to grad school, followed by relevant careers. Some wildly impractical theatre majors have become lawyers, and weirdly consider an undergraduate degree that involved a great deal of writing, analysis, and creative amazingly relevant training. One very recent grad had worked part time job in an Apple Store to help get through the BA, wound up in management full-time even before he (no sleep) did the finishing touches on that degrees with the useless major. Apple’s sending him for an all-paid MBA, and he’s delighted. Others have actually have found jobs, without the interruption of grad school, in some version of performing arts, in education, design, management, and even a precious few with the combo of talent, grit, luck and maybe good looks, have actually succeeded as actors, and that’s a real job too. Only one rule: don’t listen to the naysayers, as ubiquitous as they are fear-monegering. Do, do, do follow your passion, and who gives a lick anyway about “easy?”

If I may submit a reply in defense of my own liberal arts degree, I pursued it with the full understanding that it would not lead to an easier life. I was passionately interested in Russian literature, especially poetry, and learning the language was necessary in appreciating it. Every person who meets me zeroes in on the fact that I am fluent in a critical language. They don’t realize that what I really cared about was being skilled enough to translate Marina Tsvetaeva. Cut to my post-grad life. Do I still read Russian poetry? Absolutely. Do I expect money, food, and shelter to materialize out of that? Not in the least. It is not easy to love something that you can never make a living out of. But you have to deal with it. Pick a practical path. Do what you love on your own. And try to not to feel guilty about the quarter million dollar price tag of pursuing your passion.

Maura, I agree. Too many students are led to believe they should follow their passions at all cost. This notion is even encouraged sadly by ivory tower professors. Just because a college creates a degree in a field doesn’t mean that there are actually any jobs in it. Passions are not jobs.

That said I think adult life can be just as intellectually stimulating. The trouble is that our society and the educators in it lack creativity. They have content themselves with an antiquated educational model directed solely at the youth, who actually need to be more focused on practical pursuits.

Colleges could easily offer courses and programs in interesting fields that are not career routes in the evenings so that people can develop interests and passions beyond their early twenties while still pursuing a career. I don’t think passions and practicality have to be mutually exclusive sets.

Myself, I have a B.A. in Philosophy and Ancient Languages and a B.S in Management Information Systems. Has anyone paid me to read ancient Greek? Not yet.. I work as a software developer. I just wish I had done the practical degree first and then pursued the other as intellectual entertainment.

You might be interested in a Facebook group I created called Reform Higher Education Now. Look it up. I’m about to post this.

U.S. colleges already do this, Charles. There are community colleges in every city and rural area in the U.S. offering night courses and online courses in the liberal arts. They also offer those courses in the daytime, of course.

The trend toward “practical” coursework has been occurring for the last several years, and it is degrading the quality and quantity of offerings for the liberal arts in general and humanities in particular. Nonetheless, while you might not find many courses in Slovenian literature at your local community college, you’ll probably find several offerings in the humanities offered at odd hours as well as online.

The Ivory Tower is largely a thing of the past, I would argue. With the exception of a few eastern universities, college has become a rather practical affair already. Ms. Pennington’s post thus seems to ignore the trends of the last five years.